When a criminal alien isn’t

In conversations about immigration law reform, migrants with criminal records are something of a bogeyman. Like President Obama before him, President Trump claims that his administration’s immigration law-enforcement priorities target so-called criminal aliens. Even advocates frequently turn their backs on migrants who have run up against the criminal justice system. In New York City and Los Angeles, for example, elected officials have insisted that people convicted of certain crimes not benefit from public money intended to help migrants avoid immigration detention and deportation. In Denver, [...]

How Immigrant Defense Funds Reduce Detentions and Deportations

Inside a gleaming office tower in downtown Denver, people file into one of the country’s sixty immigration courthouses. Single men, women, children, even entire families, present themselves before an immigration judge. When their names are called, they learn why the federal government wants them removed from the United States. A trained prosecutor employed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announces the government’s charges, then the judge turns to the immigrants. Some are fortunate to have a lawyer who can push back. Maybe the government has the facts wrong. Perhaps there is a bit [...]

Massachusetts top court deals detainers another blow

In another loss for federal immigration officials, the highest court in Massachusetts decided yesterday that it is illegal under state law to hold someone on an immigration detainer. Lunn v. Commonwealth, No. SJC-12276, slip op. (Mass. July 24, 2017). This case involved a man who was held in a courthouse holding cell after the judge overseeing a criminal prosecution against him dismissed the case. [Disclosure: I was one of many immigration law scholars to sign a brief authored by my colleague Christopher Lasch submitted on behalf of Mr. Lunn.] The state’s Supreme Judicial Court easily [...]

Dream Act of 2017 crime bars

With much fanfare, Senators Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) and Linsey Graham (R-South Carolina) introduced a revamped version of the Dream Act yesterday. White House officials have already said that the president is unlikely to support it. But with a president who shifts positions constantly, it’s worth taking seriously the prospect that the Dream Act of 2017, S. 1615, moves forward. As with the earlier version of the Dream Act that came a handful of votes away from landing on President Obama’s desk and with DACA, the Dream Act of 2017 would exclude people who have encountered the criminal [...]

Migration in an altered world

Turning to God in times of difficulty, Psalm 18 counsels the Christian believer, is a core feature of faith. “The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer,” it reads. But just as God is a loving figure who supplies a protective pillar, God is also the vengeful spirit who can crush the foundations upon which fortresses built. “Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.” Environmental catastrophe is nothing new. But climate change is newly testing humans’ willingness to respond to its consequences. In his [...]

Crimmigration defense counsel

The boundary between criminal law and immigration law has been blurring for decades. The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, for example, formed a core part of the early war on drugs, as its title suggests. It also introduced the aggravated felony into immigration law, altering the lives of hundreds of thousands of migrants in the three decades that followed. Two years later, the Immigration Act of 1990 revamped immigration law. Yet when he signed it, President Bush declared it to be a central component of his administration’s attempt to curtail illicit drug activity. But it wasn’t until 2006 that [...]

Border Patrol shoots, Supreme Court punts

Seven years ago, Border Patrol agent Jesús Mesa shot and killed fifteen-year-old Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca. On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to tell us whether Hernández’s parents can successfully sue agent Mesa. The aggrieved parents sued Mesa claiming that the officer violated the Fourth and Fifth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution when he killed Hernández. They wanted Mesa to financially pay for violating their son’s constitutional rights, a claim brought under Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, 403 U.S. 388 (1971), which recognizes an implied right to sue federal [...]

Time for Denver to haul ICE into court

Under President Trump, ICE has displayed an unprecedented aggressiveness towards migrants. ICE agents have tackled a man in the doorway of Denver’s Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse. They have arrested someone at a home next to a public school during the morning drop-off window. Last week they opened fire on a man in a Denver street. Denver officials have complained. So far, they have been rebuffed. In a letter published last week by the Denver Post, ICE told Mayor Michael Hancock that it will continue its single-minded focus on arresting people it thinks might be in the United States without the [...]